Christ the King, Year A; St. Adalbert's.
We feel so scattered
right now. Isolated, divided. That could be physically, in terms of what we
need to do for our safety and that of others in this pandemic, and the social
losses that come with that. It could be grief for loved ones. It could be
political divisions that seem to be becoming more and more entrenched. Or it
could be a feeling of distance from God. Where is God in all of this?
Our scriptures today give us two answers. And
they’re not easy answers. They’re not answers that make the pain go away as
soon as you know them. But they’re answers that can give us hope. Answers that
can sustain us while we wait.
In our reading from the prophet Ezekiel, we hear
God promise to gather us together. We’re described as scattered sheep, and
there’s something really reassuring about that. That we’re sheep. We can’t
solve all our problems on our own, because sheep aren’t really known as the
great problem solvers of the animal kingdom. But God will gather us together,
and God will tend to our wounds. And God won’t let there be any threat, any
danger for us.
But these words are challenging too, in at least
two ways. First, there’s that talk of judging at the end. When I say that God
won’t let there be any danger for us, I really mean, for His sheep. But what if
we’re part of the danger? Now, of course we’re all sinners. We all wander away
from the true path. But there’s a kind of sin that’s more than just wandering
away. There’s a kind of sin by which some establish themselves as a danger to
others, and this talk of God’s protecting linked with God’s judging should make
us ask searching questions about our moral lives.
Second, even the more comforting talk about being
gathered, being healed, all of that is in the future. These words can give us
hope, and hope can equip us to endure, but they don’t on their own tell us
anything of what God is doing now. We want to believe God is consistent, that
the way God will act is the way God is acting. But these words on their own
from the prophet don’t help us see that.
Well, the Gospel will give us something to help a
little with that concern. Our gospel reading is also about the future and it’s
also about gathering. This is the end of time and all the nations and all the
angels are gathered together around Christ, who is seated on a glorious throne.
But in this vision of the future, we learn something about the present. We learn
that our glorious Lord and King, judge of the universe, is truly present in the
hungry, in the thirsty, the prisoner, the migrant, the refugee, the sick,
physically, mentally and spiritually, and in the homeless. Christ hungers for us. Christ knew hunger in
his earthly life, really, bodily, physical hunger that gnawed at him, just like
more than one in ten American households today that scrape by in food
insecurity. And he did that for our
sake, for love of us. And while he is
risen and ascended, praying for us forever at the right hand of the father, he
remains God-with-us, Emmanuel. He
remains in the hungry. Christ hungers
for our sake, and at the same time, Christ hungers for us. Christ thirsts for us, Christ is imprisoned
for us, Christ is cast out for us, Christ loses his clothing and shelter for
us, Christ is sick for us. The greatest
glory of Christ is his willingness to suffer for us.
Where is God in all this? With us, present in the
sick and suffering. Blessed Frederick Ozanam as a child and a young man had a
really tough relationship with God. As a teenager, he’d developed scruples, had
found God really absent. When went to university in Paris, moving out of his
small very Catholic village, he struggled to come to terms with the hostility
to religion all around him. He reached out for help to various people who
didn’t have words that could help him, but eventually he found a religious sister,
who is also now a Blessed, Blessed Rosalie Rendu, who didn’t even try to offer
him words but told him just to come along with her as she brought food and
medical supplies to the poor. Frederick later wrote that it was while trying to
cool down a boy dying of a fever that he first truly encountered Christ.
Frederick went on to found the St. Vincent de Paul Society, very active in our
county, to not just serve the poor but also to help others encounter Christ in
the poor served.
Christ hungers for us and in the bodies of those
who go without that hunger cries out to us.
Christ is present to us. There is still judgment in the gospel, just as
in the prophets. We can choose not to be present to Christ. And God respects
our choice. What we can’t do is claim to be following Christ and then
constantly turn our back on him in the poor.
God will gather us. Christ is present to us now.
As hungry people, fed by him in this eucharist, let us find ways, maybe
different right now, maybe more remote, to still reach out and be present to
him.
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